


gods of chance

by puckity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Suicide Attempt, Aftermath of traumatic injury, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Episode: s11e17 Red Meat, First Time, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Post-Episode: s11e17 Red Meat, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 08:45:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14745632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/pseuds/puckity
Summary: Dean said, with blood congealing in the cracks of his knuckles: “…fine, you’re gonna be fine, you’re gonna be just fine…”Sam wasn't so sure.





	gods of chance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mystifiedgal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mystifiedgal/gifts).



> This is the long-overdue commission fic written for the absolutely wonderful [**mystifiedgal**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystifiedgal), who was unceasingly patient with and kind to me as these last six months chewed me up and spit me out. She wanted some needy, intense, angst-with-a-happy-ending dealing with the aftermath of "Red Meat" and all the feelings that brought bubbling to the surface between Sam and Dean.
> 
> I hope this meets your expectations, and thank you again for being so lovely to work with! ❤❤❤
> 
> Her purchase supported the phenomenal [_Seasons: A Supernatural Fan Fiction Anthology_](http://spnshortstories.tumblr.com/) project, where I was featured in the ["Winter"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13981447) section!
> 
> Beta'd by the long-suffering [Rachel](http://betterwithsparkles.tumblr.com/).
> 
> You can also follow me on [Tumblr](http://puckity.tumblr.com/), if you'd like!

_“…fine, you’re gonna be fine, you’re gonna be just fine…”_

_“Yeah, yeah. I know...I know.”_

_And it’s soft and loose and so wet and warm and it’s all over the gash of skin and leaking down Sammy’s stomach soaking into the waistband of his jeans and it’s on Dean’s hands like dripping gloves like a second layer of skin while he’s stabbing around his brother’s guts for the bullet meant for a werewolf that cracked out of his own goddamn gun and he’s saying, he’s saying:_

_“You’re gonna be fine gonna be fine gonna be fine gonna be—”_

\---

“Dean!” Sam was close, so close—too close. Dragging one of Dean’s arms around his shoulder and throwing all his weight against Dean’s hip. Trying to prop Dean up, trying to get him on his feet and out the door but Dean was fighting him, kicking at his heels and shaking his head.

“No, Sammy, you’re hurt.” Dean pressed the flat of his palm into the dip near Sam’s navel, padded around for the ooze of blood. “Gotta get you taken care of, gotta take care of you.”

“I’m fine, Dean. Just a couple of scratches—she didn’t even get me with her claws.” Sam grabbed the knob on the creaky screen door, left a smear of blood on it that had to come from somewhere.

If not Sammy, then—

“Can you shift your weight? Lean a little into me.” Sam circled his other arm around Dean’s waist and swung Dean’s feet an inch or so off the ground. “I’ve gotta get you down these stairs.”

Dean’s hand—the one that wasn’t squeezed around Sam’s shoulder—landed on Sam’s back and even through four layers he could still feel the muscles clench and release. He splayed his fingers into the thick canvas—what could it hurt to let his kid brother jostle him around like a rag doll, let himself have a few minutes of being something fragile in Sam’s arms?

“Bleeding.” Dean murmured it under Sam’s ear.

Sam let him go, just a little. Just so his toes could touch the mud at the bottom of the steps. “Yeah, from that crocotta—and some from your leg.”

His leg.

Dean felt it now: the jagged, fleshy chunks of skin catching against the seam of his jeans, the burn of exposed bone, the sticky soak of cold blood between skin and cloth. That old woman had been all homemade jam and cookies in the beginning but then they pulled a knife on her and it was all downhill from there.

“It’s okay though. I made a tourniquet with her lace runners that should hold until I can get you somewhere safe and stitch you up.” Sam’s breath was shallow and off-beat.

With an ear pressed against Sam’s chest, Dean could hear his heartbeat. It sloshed around in the puddles of his brain.

“I can hit a pharmacy after I drop you off.” Sam shuffled them through the gravel, down the long driveway where they’d parked when the sun was still bright in the sky. “You’re gonna need something a little stronger than Tylenol to take the edge off this.”

“No!” Dean went stiff, lurched with the memory of watching himself frothing on the floor of an urgent care in Grangeville.

After it was all said and done—after Dean had woken up and Sammy had shot a round straight through Corbin’s heart—Dr. Kessler had tugged him gentle by the elbow. Pulled him back before he marched into Sam’s room, before he could get him and his brother on the road again and as far away from this nightmare stretch of wolves and Idaho woods as they could get.

_Your system took a hell of a shock today. I’d stay away from heavy pain killers for a while—though I don’t know if that’s something you can manage with your, um, line of work. But still, just to be safe._

And he’d nodded and shook her hand and thanked her for her professional advice; whatever it took to get them out the door.

He hadn’t really thought about that again until just now.

Sam paused—a hiccup in his step—but didn’t say anything.

“You know I hate the chalky taste of pills.” Dean offered it with a smirk that Sam couldn’t see anyway. “Rather just use whiskey. Keep it simple, right?”

Sam slowed, started to maneuver Dean away from the wall of warm muscle and the pump of life beneath it. “Sure.”

Another jerky movement and something wide and metal snapped open.

“Hey, careful.” Dean would know Baby’s back door hinges five states away.

Sam scoffed, threw down something in the backseat and then folded Dean inside.

He wrapped the corner of a ratty fleece blanket around Dean’s leg and tucked the edge under his knee. Lace bloomed red around the shreds of denim. “So you don’t bleed all over the leather.”

The smile they shared was weak, thinner than the blood clotting along Dean’s thigh.

“Damn right.” Dean coughed, let his head hit the seat as Sam climbed into the front and sped off.

\---

 

Dean stayed in bed—texting Sam for burgers and beers—for two days. He even dutifully used the crutch Sam had left leaning against his dresser to hobble to the bathroom or, if Sam wasn’t responding fast enough, the kitchen. He let Sam change his bandages and open his bottles and Dean rolled his eyes whenever Sam got fussy about other people but he kept his mouth shut when it was about him.

Not that Sam was fussy—that was Dean’s version of the story, not his. Sam was responsible and conscientious and thorough and they both knew that Dean would’ve gotten gangrene and sepsis and all kinds of disgusting parasites over the years without him. So Sam wasn’t _fussy_.

The wound—which had been dug up Dean’s leg from knee to hip before Sam had had a chance to reach for his gun—was deep, needed double stitches, and Sam could mock up some pinched faces and huffiness if it meant Dean had an excuse to get the rest neither of them ever really allowed themselves.                                                                              

But Sam woke up on the third morning to Dean limping in the bunker halls, rummaging through the weapons closet and wincing every time he tried to bend at the knees.

“What the hell, Dean?” Sam shoved the frizz of morning hair out of his face. “What are you doing?”

Dean didn’t turn around. “I’m knitting cozies—what the hell does it look like I’m doing, Sam?”

“It looks like you’re trying to pop your stitches.” Sam snatched the crossbow out of Dean’s hand. “Why’re you out of bed?”

Dean swiveled on his good ankle, eyed the distance from him to the bow Sam was holding over his head and seemed to think better of it. “I’m doing inventory. Think I found us a case down near Tulsa and figured we oughta stock up.”

Sam’s hand went to his hip. “Okay, first of all, both of us suck with crossbows and if we take one anywhere the only things we’re gonna end up shooting are our feet and each other.”

Dean shrugged vague and non-committal.

“Second of all, we’re not doing anything strenuous until your leg heals up. We don’t need you getting a staph infection because you couldn’t take a few days off for recovery.”

Sam stretched over Dean, skidded the back of his shoulders across Dean’s chest as he put the crossbow back onto the highest shelf. Not that Dean couldn’t reach it up there, but he was making a point.

He shuffled Dean out of the closet and clicked the door shut behind him.

“Please, Dean. Give it a few more days.” Sam blinked wide, wet and watery, and let just a hint of a pout settle into the corners of his mouth. “For me.”

It was his failsafe, his big red button that he didn’t push unless it was an emergency. Sam knew that if he used it too much, if he played that card too often or too fast, it’d go sour for the both of them. Dean would go hard at the joints, would turn it back on him like a switchblade. He’d resent Sam for trying to get something out of him—just like everyone else in their lives—and Sam would lose these moments of watching the rigid frame of his brother go slack. Dean was always surprised, never quite ready, and Sam loved him regardless but there was something hallowed about these mossy-soft parts of him.

“That’s a cheap shot.” Dean ducked his head, scuffed a shoeless foot against the tiles. “But fine.”

They walked back to Dean’s bedroom in step. Sam kept the same uneven pace as him and Dean grumbled, shoved at him like he didn’t need the kid gloves and Sam let him. Let them stay pressed shoulders to elbows like the bunker tunnels weren’t quite big enough for them to not be touching.

He left Dean in his bed, three of their firmest pillows shoved under his knee, and drove Baby into town for the monthly Big Mart run. When he got back—juggling two fistfuls of bulky plastic bags and wrestling with his keys—he heard drifts of a conversation. Voices, or one voice talking without a response.

Dean was speaking low the way he did when he was trying not to be overheard.

“…yeah, no I got that but—no I haven’t, I mean, I’ve popped a couple of aspirin but it’s not like—hell if I know, I was just grabbing everything with barbital in the name—a few minutes, the doc said that it wasn’t long enough for there to be any brain damage—I don’t, hey, fuck you too Rusty, you ain’t my GP—well, what the hell was I supposed to do, man? Sam was dead on that cabin floor and—yeah, yeah, you can ride that high horse right down Screw You Road—because it hurts like _shit_ and I wanna know what I can take that’s not gonna add another OD to my otherwise spotless medical records—haha, that’s hilarious—yeah well, don’t forget who went to Hell and lived to tell about it—uh huh, okay, sure, I’ll just Amazon myself a bucket of green tea—no, Sam doesn’t know, are you kidding me? He doesn’t need that kind of thing knockin’ around in that overthinking brain of his—yeah, well, it’s true—uh huh, I can probably do that—alright, well, thanks—yeah, you too…”

Something was ringing; it sounded muffled like Sam’s ears had been stuffed full of cotton. He dissected Dean’s half of the conversation sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase, tagging all the important parts with pins and arrows: _barbital, brain damage, dead on that cabin floor, another OD._

_Sam doesn’t know._

And he could’ve kicked down Dean’s thick oak door, put his fist through the layers of brick and cement, screamed until he was coughing up blood but it wouldn’t be enough. Because Dean had lied to him before, had built them pillow forts out of all the things he told Sam were true because he wanted to believe them himself. Dean had done enough goddamn stupid things in the name of protecting Sam to fill a pool to drown himself in, kept on pretending like there weren’t other motives tied like cement blocks to their ankles and dragging them down. And he’d died before, so many times that Sam lost count even though each one had seared a brand into his threadbare soul. But it’d never been like this.

Dean had sold his soul, gambled with literal years of his life, bartered with demons and devils and Death himself. He’d taken on Heaven and Hell and Purgatory, burned The Mark into his arm and faced down gods of every flavor—including the skin of their battered best friend. He’d said no to Michael and Lucifer and destiny and _Dad_ —but it’d always been a bet. He’d always rolled the dice and crossed his fingers, always had the goal of making it out alive.

But how could this have been a bet? How could swallowing down however many pills it took to drop Dean Winchester have any goal other than not getting back up again? Because Sam knew that hunt, knew that day, knew that cabin floor. Dean didn’t tell him, said he’d handled it. Sam had asked— _what happened?_ —and Dean wouldn’t look at him.

_Nothing._

But Sam had known, in the cliff-fall of his stomach as they pulled out of the empty lot in front of that three-county urgent care.

Dean wouldn’t tell him, but _Sam knew._

\---

Things were weird—tense like waking up to a cluster of muscle cramps—and Dean didn’t know why.

Sam was weird; he was upset and pissy about it, if Dean was reading the signs right.

Dean always read Sam’s signs right.

Sam didn’t look up when Dean limped into whatever rooms he’d planted himself in, didn’t glance back from his books or his laptop or the organic tortilla wraps that Dean had bought him at a health food store in Kansas City that’d reeked like moldy hemp. He answered in short syllables, one or two word phrases, shrugs and nods and grunts and Dean threw down the _because I’m older_ card as often as he could—but _god_ , he hated when Sam dug his little brother heels in, petulant and pouting. Hated the way it kicked up old patterns, looped back barbed-wire habits. Hated the things it made Dean remember: Sam in too-big hand-me-downs—uneven bangs and a jaw set sour and hurt like he could chew down whatever it was that’d made him sad—and Dean biting the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper just so he wouldn’t go on and do something about it. Something he’d regret, something that’d bite them both back.

He rewound through the past few days, checked his cliff notes for anything that could’ve set Sam off. He’d been fussing about Dean’s leg and huffed a little when Dean’d used a whole roll of toilet paper to rewrap the wound (the gauze was all the way in the bathroom) and refused to let him fix the flight groove on their crossbow—hadn’t even let him take it out of the closet—but none of that was tantrum-worthy.

Maybe it was something else; maybe he’d gotten a call or been sent a lead that he wasn’t telling Dean about, at least not until the stitches came out. Dean liked that option the least because it meant that there was something out there already, a fresh disaster that’d found its way to their front door just like the rest of them.

Whatever it was, after a lunch and dinner with only half a conversation between them, Dean decided enough was enough. He always gave Sammy a couple of hours to sulk but then it was fair game; those were the rules and they both knew it.

“Alright Sam, spit it out.” Dean hiked himself up onto the war room round table, let his slippers dangle off his feet. “What’s got your tighty-whities in a twist?”

Sam looked up from the musty maps he’d spread out in front of him. Dean expected a smartass comeback or an angry brushoff or maybe one of those long-suffering sighs that Sam pulled broad like Gumby-arms for effect. But he just blinked, kept his mouth pressed in a bloodless line and exhaled through his nose.

“What, the silent treatment? Really?” Dean swayed a few centimeters, thrown off-kilter by the steel tic of Sam’s jaw. “Look, I know you’re pissed about something but how can I apologize if I don’t even know what I did?”

A beat, then: “What happened in Grangeville?” Sam bit each syllable off with his teeth.

Dean’s neck went cold like icicle drips. “Where?”

“Idaho, with the wolves.” Sam clenched and unclenched his fists. “What happened when I died?

A dozen and a half stories reeled out from Dean’s brain, choked up his throat and tied themselves into a knot. _I kept working, I saved Michelle and tried to save that son-of-a-bitch Corbin too. I didn’t even have a chance to process it before you came back, was too busy being tasered by the yokel deputies. I fixed it, Sam—I made it all better, so what does it matter? I knew anyway, I did. I knew._

What pulled itself out from behind his teeth was: “I told you, Sammy. There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you.”

“So what, you broke into the drug cabinets and pulled an all-you-can-eat buffet? You just decided to pack it in and call it a day even though Amara and Lucifer were still out there, even though we—” Sam stopped short; his eyes darted like he was trying to double-check his calculations. “Wait a second. You were trying to make another deal, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.” It felt like a freebie, an out. Like squeaking through on a technicality. “I figured the best way to barter with Death was through their direct line.”

Sam sucked in his cheeks, worried his nails into the tracks of his jeans. Dean knew that face: he was considering, making his lists for and against Dean’s points and seeing if they held up. And they would—Dean knew that too—because it wasn’t him reaching for the same brand of reckless Hail Marys he’d always defaulted to that had Sam so worked up. It was that Sam thought this hadn’t been part of their larger plan to keep going—to keep moving forward until there was no more forward to move to. Sam thought he’d given up, thought the hill he’d decided to literally die on wouldn’t have been worth it.

Because Sam believed that he was worth bartering for, worth making deals for and fighting fate for, but not actually dying for. When there were no more get-out-of-jail-free cards left, Sam believed Dean would choose to keep going like they planned. Like they promised each other. Like they both had before, with their hands tied and the pistol of normalcy pressed muzzle to forehead.

Dean’s head went light like it’d been overfilled with helium.

Maybe they’d changed somewhere along the way. Maybe _he’d_ changed. Maybe the punches he used to be able to roll with knocked him out now, maybe he’d taken one too many blows over the years. Or maybe this was how it’d always been between them—maybe the deals and the tricks and the Plan Zs had always just been buffers stuffed between what they’d really do for each other.

What _Dean_ would really do for Sam, and why.

“So I tapped the reaper hotline—what’s the worst that could’ve happened?” Dean’s eyes followed the grout lines in the seams of the tiles. His palms flattened against the plexiglass top of the table. “And if it didn’t work, well then I’d still get to be with you. So it would’ve been a win-win either way.”

\---

Sam let it go, the way he let all the problems without solutions that packed into his cracks like putty go. He let it go like Jess, like Dad and Ruby and Hell and all the third degree burns that only showed if someone peeled him inside-out. He let it go like Amelia, like Benny and Gadreel and the Mark. Like how Dean had said—black smoke in his eyes—that Sam was the weight around his neck that’d always been suffocating him.

Let it go like that—which was to say, not at all.

He nodded along to Dean’s explanations ( _excuses_ , and they both knew it); fuzzy like cotton had been shoved in around his brain. He crossed his arms and caught his knuckles tight in the fold of his elbows, coughed and cleared his throat and said: “Okay, okay, I get it, okay.”

Dean’s lies had developed a taste, like salt and silver and the bright burn of something else’s grace and Sam gagged on it. Choked it down and said it was okay but it wasn’t: Dean wasn’t okay, _Sam_ wasn’t okay. They weren’t okay—hadn’t been okay and maybe would never be okay and that was another question without an answer. A question that’d been growing like a tumor in Sam’s throat since Dean resurrected himself and the knife-slice of demon outweighed the tear of the human flesh it was wrapped in so long as it got Sam what he was looking for. Since the Leviathan-ooze of Dick Roman devoured Sam’s world whole, left him with swiss cheese sanity and all his moorings cut loose. Since he tracked his way back to Dean without a soul-compass to guide him, running on something more primal than instinct. Since Dean died the first time (the first real time, the first time that didn’t flip a reset switch, the first time it wasn’t a by-the-skin-of-our-teeth miss) and nothing—not three meals a day of whiskey, not standing over monsters just to watch the life drain out of them, not the sulfur blood that he’d been built for and from— _nothing_ dulled the parts of him that’d been carved hollow and jagged.

Since the day that Dean had folded him—a rickety frame of slingshot hormones and stubborn, grave-deep fear—in his arms and Sam realized the double-clutch: that they would always be brothers and that he didn’t care. That it didn’t matter, didn’t change a damn thing for him but would change every damn thing for Dean.

So he kept it to himself, locked it up six ways to Sunday. Even when the hounds came howling for Dean, even when his own heels slipped against oblivion. Even when something ground strange between them, when the lines they’d spent their lives rehearsing hit like a fishbowl against concrete, when they whiplashed looks between them that neither one could really read. Even when Sam paused, shook his head sharp but still wondered—even then, Sam didn’t ask.

And what would he ask anyway, if it came down to it: _Dean, do you ever feel like? Do you ever want? Do you ever think that maybe we could—together?_

Questions without answers, at least not ones that any good could come out of.

Sam let it go, walked out of the room calm and even and didn’t slam any doors after him. He let Dean make him the meatloaf he swore was almost as good as their mom’s had been, huffed when Dean poked at him about using ketchup and how it was gonna overpower the glaze, took the open beer that Dean passed him and gulped down half of it before setting the bottle back on the table.

Then he wandered back to his room and laid awake, blinking into the darkness.

_Another bet, another gamble. Gotta shuffle off the mortal coil if you wanna trade stocks with Death. And either way, it was a win-win: both alive or both dead. Or—_

Or maybe Sam woke up with a hole in his gut and crawled on his hands and knees back to that clinic only to find Dean stretched cold on the linoleum. Maybe Sam lived and Dean died and maybe that never even fucking crossed his big brother’s desperation-clogged mind in the breath between pills spilled out on his palm and pills crammed down his throat.

The back of Sam’s tongue chalked over; chemical burns caught in the swallow. He rolled over and grabbed his phone off of the nightstand. It clicked on and Sam squinted at the white-bright glow.

He typed out the message clumsy, didn’t proofread it before hitting send: _what if you died and i didnt??_ Then he stared at the text for a few minutes until his wrist started to cramp.

The phone fell clunky and warm on his chest and he didn’t pick it up, didn’t plug it back into the charger. He waited for the vibrations, the buzz against his skin that would mean he’d get at least one answer out of all of this. He waited for seconds, minutes—ten, twenty, forty-five and the weight on his chest went still and cool and silent.

When his eyes started to pull heavy he reached for it again, lit it up and this time the electric glare stung. He punched out one more message then let the phone clatter loud onto the wooden tabletop.

_nothing matters when youre gone_

\---

It’d been years since Dean had woken up with Sam in his arms. Since he’d yawned and gotten a mouthful of shaggy hair. Since the first thing he smelled in the morning was spearmint and wood spice and a tickle of the fruity shampoos that Sam had always preferred. It’d been years—decades, lifetimes—since Dean had let himself feel a warm body ( _the_ warm body, the one that he’d kept as a yardstick to measure out against the rest of them) without waiting for it to go chill, to bleed out onto the sheets next to him.

 _I watched the man I love die._ Michelle wouldn’t look at him—sitting knees together in that dingy hallway—but she’d been firm, insistent, sure. _There’s no normal after that._

She didn’t look at Dean but that didn’t make her any less right: about normal, about death, about love—about any of it. Didn’t make her words sound any less like an echo gone flat, didn’t stop Dean from filling in all her pauses with the freeze-frame of his baby brother spread out limp like someone had stolen all his bones and wound down his heart until it went quiet and dark.

 _The man I love_ ; and it was true—not even a secret—that Dean loved Sam. Loved him as a brother, as a partner, as his best friend and the last anchor in any storm. Loved him the longest and the most, loved him past reason and logic, loved him against fate and destiny and God himself. In all the ways he could love, he loved Sam.

In all the ways…that wedged itself into Dean like popcorn kernels stuck in teeth. He meant: all the ways _but_ , all the ways _except_. All the ways he couldn’t—didn’t—want, all the ways he wasn’t gonna ask Sam to be. All the ways that he’d spent the thin shoestring of his life trying to keep tied up, trying to double knot with mismatched laces and pretend like it’d hold. That it would be enough, that Dean wasn’t missing anything without the pair.

But every time Sam left—every single time—it spun out like swinging a bat in a house of mirrors. Everything reflected in shards, warped and shattered, and Dean couldn’t make sense of it anymore. Sense of the world, of living, of himself and he could fake it—had practically gotten a degree in faking it—but nothing mattered, not without Sam.

_nothing matters when youre gone_

He’d stared at his screen, read each letter and sounded out each syllable like it was a foreign language. He hadn’t thought about an outcome that wasn’t an _us_ , hadn’t run the numbers on if Sam kept breathing and he didn’t. Because it hadn’t been possible; hadn’t mattered anyway because Dean was selfish and starved and he’d never not want, never not need—not if Sam wasn’t there to keep him from going hungry. So it was Dean, not Sam— _never Sam_ —and he’d be okay. However it went for Dean, Sam would be okay.

Sam had asked him once, wet-faced in the creaks of a decaying church with angels about to fall: _Who are you gonna turn to next time instead of me? Do you have any idea what it feels like to watch your brother just—_ and Dean had cut him off, told himself that it was just the holy oil fire in Sam’s veins that had made him say that. That it was all the shit Dean had shoveled on Sam since he busted out of Purgatory that’d twisted them both ugly and bitter-sick—just one more thing Dean had gone and screwed up for the both of them.

After turning his phone off-on-off-on and still seeing the same words in the same order, Dean walked out of his room without socks or slippers and followed the cool cement as it steered him towards Sam’s door. He knocked, one rap of knuckles, then turned the handle and opened it just enough to squeeze through. It was dark—stuffy like a pile of blankets left in a heap to dry—and the only sound was Sam’s half-snoring, rough and rhythmless.

The bed wasn’t big enough for both of them—was barely big enough for Sam by himself—and Dean only got a knee up on the mattress before Sam was shifting, restless and grumbly, to make room for him. Dean stayed on his side; he didn’t want to wake Sam up. Just being there with the heat and the wheezing and the greedy way Sam tangled himself up in the covers—just that was enough.

He opened his eyes to synth tones looping aggressively—one of the default alarm tones—and the long, warm press of Sam into the curve of his body. A few flops of hair caught on his tongue as he swallowed down his morning dry mouth.

“Dean…?” Sam’s voice scratched raw like he’d spent the night screaming.

Dean kept his limbs loose but didn’t pull away. “You’d better hope it is, otherwise the bunker’s got some serious security breaches.”

Sam’s chest rose full and even, like he was timing his breaths. “You saw my messages?”

“Yeah, I did.” Dean let his fingertips push gentle against Sam’s chest. “I figured that was probably a conversation we should been having face-to-face. If you wanted to talk about it, I mean.”

“I don’t know if I’ve got much more to say.” Sam shifted, rolled over so they could see each other. “You almost died. _Again_. You tried to kill yourself and you didn’t even tell me about it which is—I mean, it’s not fine but I get why you did it and I’m not even really angry about it, not anymore. I just…I just need you to know that you’re not the only one. You’re not the only one who loses everything. You’re not the only one who can’t go on—who _doesn’t want_ to go on. So if you go and pull a stunt like that again, just fucking remember that, okay?

Dean closed his eyes, let Sam’s words crackle through him. “Okay.”

The sheets shuffled next to him and the sleepy slur was gone from Sam’s voice. “Okay.”

“Mmhm.” Dean hummed. His eyelids twitched.

A long, still drag between them and the weight of the air, of the bed, of the world heaved.

Rearranged. Changed.

Dean felt Sam’s muggy-hot breath fog up his face. It clouded into his nose and shoved past his mouth and then the press of nervous-chewed lips against him sealed it all down the back of Dean’s throat.

When Sam pulled back, Dean could still taste him.

“Okay?” Sam was shivering like whatever it was that’d been keeping him steady might not hold long enough for an answer.

Dean opened his eyes, blinked slow, trailed his finger from Sam’s elbow to his wrist. “Yeah, Sammy. Okay.”

\---

He didn’t know why he did it, didn’t even know if there was a why. Didn’t know why he’d curled up against the edge of his mattress as soon as the door had opened in the too-early darkness, why he’d let Dean lay down long enough to fall asleep next to him, why he hadn’t gotten up with his alarm and wandered off to the bathroom or the kitchen or anywhere else that put at least one wall of solid concrete between them. He didn’t know why he’d turned, why he’d talked, why he’d asked.

Didn’t know why he’d—didn’t know why Dean had let him, why Dean was still there giving him a hazy smile instead of a fistful of bloody knuckles and cracked teeth.

Sam didn’t know. Or he’d known since that phone call, since Dean refused his usual pain treatment of whiskey and drugstore pills, since that hunt and that gutshot or maybe since the last close call before that close call or…

Sam had known forever, since before the fire in his mind and the sulfur in his veins. Before he could have known, before Chuck crafted their souls from the same piece of eternity sliced down the middle. Sam knew it like he knew death, like he knew Hell and pain and torment, branded on the inside of his flesh. Sam knew it like he knew Dean, like he knew himself, like he knew _them_ but he still didn’t have a goddamn clue.

Dean held him soft like he was some precious artifact that ought to be under glass. Touched him with fingertips when Sam wanted hands, palms gripped so tight that his skin stained purple under them. Nuzzled his cheeks and fluttered kid-kisses against his forehead when Sam wanted teeth and nails, wanted blood and bruises and marks that he could stare at later and remember that he belonged somewhere. With someone.

He wanted to make marks too, wanted to cover every one of Dean’s scars with something he’d dragged out of Dean with pants and moans and bone-deep pleasure until his body was a map that led to Sam and Sam alone. They were both etched into each other on the inside, but Sam wanted to leave visible reminders for when they needed it.

The softness felt too much like idolatry—like contrition for Dean’s sins—so Sam straddled on top of Dean and ground himself down. He didn’t try to work Dean’s boxers off, didn’t need to because he could feel Dean through them, hot and hard and already hitching up under him.

He held Dean by the wrists, brought his hands to Sam’s hips and pressed them in at the elastic waistband. He squeezed Dean rough, needed him to understand without the explanation that Sam wasn’t sure he could give.

Sam gnawed at the hollow of his cheek. “Okay?”

Dean looked up at him, wide and reeling. He nodded. “Okay.”

When they moved again the atmosphere was charged and ready to shock. Dean’s palms scorched like acid, held on like he wanted to tear a piece of Sam out and keep it for himself. He pushed down the back of Sam’s boxers and up under his t-shirt—one of Dean’s old overworn ones—and left uneven scratches and burns in his wake.

Sam pressed one hand to the tented outline of his own cock, rubbed and pulled at himself through the wrinkled cotton and he’d never really been a showman in bed but maybe he was still trying to impress his big brother just a little bit. His other hand shoved Dean’s shirt up and pinched at a small nipple. Dean’s hips stuttered; his cock thrust up along the dip of Sam’s ass.

A strange, guttural sound echoed in Sam’s ears and it took him half a second to realize that it’d come out of his mouth. Dean matched it with a grunt, a groan, and Sam wasn’t loud like this but maybe that was different with Dean too.

He fisted his cock fast and erratic and with the dry fabric and the lack of focus he should’ve gone soft again but instead he was snapping, buzzing, careening towards the edge. Dean rutted vicious and Sam pushed back into each stroke but it wasn’t enough, would never, _could_ never be enough.

“…okay, is this okay Dean, is it okay…” Sam clawed at him, dug his blunt nails into the constellation of freckles across Dean’s chest.

“It’s okay Sam, it’s okay…” Dean pulled him down and wrapped him up so tight that Sam couldn’t keep jerking himself off. He could’ve broken free in three moves, maybe two, but he let himself stay. Let Dean pound against him so hard that Sam wondered if it hurt good or if maybe Dean—maybe both of them—couldn’t really tell the difference anymore.

“Fuck, Sammy, it’s okay, you’re gonna be okay, we’re gonna be okay…” Dean choked on the reassurances, went stiff and brittle and Sam could feel the twitches as he came buried between Sam’s legs.

Dean’s neck stretched out long and flushed and Sam sank his teeth into the jugular. Between them, Sam’s cock began to spurt thick and wet and he’d been right there for a while but it still took Sam by surprise. He shook and shuddered and when he let go of Dean’s throat the teeth marks were red and shiny and even though he’d already finished coming the bottom of his stomach still clenched around nothing.

Then everything was too quiet and Sam’s breathing sounded like gasps into the stillness. Dean pet his hair, smoothed down the sweat and tangles, and whispered against the top of his head:

“…it’s okay, gonna be okay, we’re okay, we’re gonna be fine, Sammy, we’re gonna be fine…”

And Sam knew that, or maybe he didn’t, or maybe it didn’t matter either way. He rolled up and kissed Dean, like a duty or an order or a pact, and kept going until the only thing he could hear was Dean rattling around inside his head— _we’re gonna be fine, Sammy, gonna be fine—_ and swallowed everything else down for them both.


End file.
